“And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
The most important verse in all of the Old Testament as far as Judaism is concerned is Deuteronomy 6:4. It is called the Shema, the Hebrew command “listen,” because that’s the first word. It goes like this: Read the rest…
“Jephthah judged Israel six years. Then Jephthah the Gileadite died and was buried in his city in Gilead.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Most of the Judges receive some kind of a summary statement that the people sought the Lord for the extent of their leadership and then turned away from Him afterwards. Jephthah just gets this note that he died and was buried in Gilead. This is a reflection of the continued decline in the spiritual state of the people. They cry out to God for help, but don’t even both to turn to Him when He answers. They are reaching a dangerously low point. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. Read the rest…
“But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere.” (ESV – Read the chapter)
We recently purchased a new house–our first. We are pretty excited about it still. Before we could move in, there was quite a bit of work to do including taming the jungle the previous couple of owners had allowed to grow up in the backyard. With some excellent and most appreciated help from several of the men in our church, we got that and whole lot of other work finished. Read the rest…
“And many came to him. And they said, ‘John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.'” (ESV – Read the chapter)
Do you want to be great? Most of us yearn for that. I heard about another pastor a few weeks ago who does a blog too. He has 200,000 followers. My carnal first thought was, “I want 250,000.” That’s inside of all of us. We want greatness. We want to be not just recognized, but recognized more than everybody else for what we have done. Our culture encourages this too. Our heroes are not great statesmen and scientists and public servants anymore. Our heroes are sports stars and movie stars and social media stars. It’s a great rat race whose catch is that there isn’t any cheese waiting at the end of the path. Read the rest…
This past Sunday as we continued our conversation about who God made us to be as a church, the next key element of our identity is growth. Keep reading to see how growing people has always been a part of God’s approach to humanity and how it is, could be, and should be fleshed out in our community. Thanks for reading.
Growing Stronger
Growth is natural. As it was nearing the first summer Lisa and I spent in Virginia, we decided we wanted to plant a garden. Neither of us really had any idea what we were doing. We got some help and advice from folks in the church who were themselves avid gardeners, but much beyond help with the plowing of a 30 by 60 plot in our backyard, we pretty much did all the work ourselves. We planted way too much. We wound up spending almost every evening and Saturday morning pulling weeds and picking produce (and trying desperately to give away the hundreds of squash and zucchini and cucumbers we had). We canned more green beans than would fit in our meager pantry. But, by the time it was all said and done, we had successfully grown a pretty nice garden. Here’s the funny part, though, and if you’re a gardener you know this to be true: The work we did had almost no impact on the actual growth of the garden. Sure, by pruning and pulling weeds and spraying for bugs and watering when it got dry we might have extended the life of the plants and increased the size of the harvest, but there was not a single thing we did to cause the garden to grow save putting the seeds in the ground. Once they were in the ground and covered with dirt, the rest happened all on its own. Again: growth is natural. Read the rest…
The Nexus 